(April 12, 2012 at 11:41 am)Perhaps Wrote: Just because we are effected by our past, doesn't necessarily mean that we don't have control over our future decisions. If the waffles make you salivate more so than the pancakes, it does not follow that you are required to eat the waffles - which is what a world without free will would necessitate. The world may be determinate in nature, yet still provide us with the ability to make decisions based on arbitrary whims (this position is known as compatibilism).
Is that your understanding of free-will then? The capacity to be arbitrary? So if a decision is thought-out, considered and reasoned - that it, rational - as opposed to arbitrary and whimsical, then it is not an expression of free-will? If that's free-will, I don't see how it is even useful?
